Stoughton fire captain recalls the gore, anger and goodness

Stoughton Fire Capt. Bob O’Donnell was at the finish line when the bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon on April 15, and began making tourniquets to help dozens of bombing victims in the minutes after the blasts.

For the “100 Days, 100 Lives” project, The Enterprise spoke again with Stoughton Fire Capt. Bob O’Donnell, who was at the finish line and began making tourniquets to help dozens of bombing victims in the minutes after the blasts.

In the days and weeks after the attacks, O’Donnell said he tried to distance himself from watching media coverage of the bombings “because it became a little bit too personal.” He also refrained from retelling his experience to work colleagues and friends.

“I kept telling the whole story over and over and I knew that wasn’t a good thing,” he said. “I thought, ‘I can’t get away from this.’”

O’Donnell, 57, of Easton, who works a second job as an emergency room nurse at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center-Milton, said his work has helped him stay focused and cope since the bombings.

He said his past experiences in emergency situations also have helped. O’Donnell has worked on the Norfolk County Critical Incident Stress Team, which helps area emergency responders.

“I function best when I keep busy,” said O’Donnell. “I know that my personality is such that, that is what I need to do. If I had slowed down, I think a little bit about things too much.”

O’Donnell said he hasn’t been back to the bombing locations since April 15.

“I don’t feel as though I need to avoid it, but I don’t really feel the sense in going there,” he said.

Here is a timeline of what he and his son experienced. Times are approximate.

April 15

2:45 p.m.: O’Donnell is standing on bleachers, waiting to greet his 19-year-old marathoner son, Bob O’Donnell III, at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. He is holding his camera and recording the race, preparing to capture his son’s triumphant arrival.

2:50 p.m.: O’Donnell hears two loud blasts, 10 seconds apart. The blasts shake the ground and his video recording. Flame, smoke and chaos ensue. People are screaming and begin running from the scene. O’Donnell stops recording and runs toward the smoke, pushing through the crowd.

2:52 p.m.: O’Donnell runs across the street, pulls himself over the security fence and sees the carnage – bodies, body parts and blood. One person lay motionless. Another man, knocked down and wearing pants that were still smoldering, cries for help. Dozens more languish in pain. O’Donnell sees dozens of people missing limbs – severed arms, legs and fingers lay atop blood-soaked concrete. His first mission – make tourniquets to stop the bleeding.

“It was awful. It was a sea of blood,” O’Donnell said. “You’re slipping in people’s blood, and they’re hanging onto each other.”

Page 2 of 3 - 2:55 p.m.: O’Donnell is busy navigating through the wounded and making dozens of tourniquets to help save lives. O’Donnell becomes furious as he stands among the carnage and rushes from victim to victim to help. One of them is dead. He feels immediate rage.

“I was angry right from the start, as soon as I saw it all. My first reaction was rage, ‘How dare someone do this here.’”

But a feeling of goodness quickly replaces his anger. “People were all pitching in,” he said. “I kind of replaced that rage with ‘Look at all the goodness that’s being done here. Look at all the people helping out and how they’re functioning.’”

3 p.m.: O’Donnell fears his son may have been injured. His son doesn’t know his father had rushed to the bombing scene to help the victims. He also doesn’t know if anyone in his family, who were waiting for him at the finish line, have been injured. Police stop the younger O’Donnell and other runners as they approach the final mile of the 26.2-mile race.

“No one really knew what was going on,” the younger O’Donnell said the day after the race. “It was gut-wrenching. It was nerve-wracking.”

3:05 p.m.: As panic spread, the younger O’Donnell, who is also an emergency medical technician, tries to calm down people. He asks officers to help but police, who notice he is limping after a 25-mile run, tell him to first focus on walking. Down at ground zero, his father helps load victims into wheelchairs and ambulances. He fears secondary explosions.

3:50 p.m.: An hour after the blasts, the younger O’Donnell uses a friend’s cell phone to send a text to his girlfriend. He then heads to Fenway Park to meet with his family. But it would be more than seven hours before he would see his father, who is busy helping the wounded, again.

4 p.m.: The younger O’Donnell is shivering in his running clothes as he walks to meet his family. Strangers offer him sweatshirts, food, water. A freshman at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, he is studying biology and plans to work as a physician’s assistant. He raised nearly $7,500 for Children’s Hospital in Boston before running the marathon.

“Driving in was eerie,” Goldberg recalled. “People were unsure of what was going on. Streets were blocked off. There were police everywhere. There were ambulances lined up everywhere.”

11:30 p.m.: Father and son reunite at their home in Easton. O’Donnell gives his son a long hug. He said he has no regrets in rushing to help the victims.

Page 3 of 3 - “I saw all the good things that normal, ordinary citizens were doing to help the people,” he said, “and I knew that those same good people would be around my son if he needed it.”

April 16

O’Donnell recalls the tragic events while sitting alongside his son. He struggles to speak of the incident with a reporter.

“I still get all worked up when thinking about how close it was,” he said, crying.

O’Donnell, who has worked as a firefighter and an emergency room nurse for more than three decades, then goes back to work. He heads to his second job in the emergency room at the hospital in Milton, but before he leaves, he hugs his son.

May 22

O’Donnell gives a lecture to area emergency responders at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton about his experiences after the bombings.

Dr. Rick Herman, chairman of Good Samaritan’s emergency department, gives O’Donnell an award “for his humanitarianism and selfless acts of heroism” on that day. He said giving the lecture was therapeutic.

“It’s also important for people to understand that the stuff that you learn in these (EMT) classes actually comes in handy, but there’s no way you’re going to be prepared for the degree of carnage that I saw that day,” he said.